Garage
by polkadottedpicture
Summary: When things go downhill, the child is the one who notices. CloTi.


**Title: Garage  
Rating: K+**

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN FINAL FANTASY VII AND NEVER WILL.**

**A/N Set through the eyes of Cloud and Tifa's daughter. She doesn't realize that "garage time" for her dad happened for a reason and it is only until she is older that she notices the strain on her parents' relationship. Please R&R! **

When I was younger, I always liked watching my father work on his motorcycle. He and Denzel were usually done when Mama had given me a bath after dinner. I would crawl onto my father's lap and together, we would admire the bike and he would explain what he had done to it. I never did really understand all the technical terms, but that didn't matter. I'm sure he enjoyed my company as much I enjoyed his.

Sometimes when I reached the garage, he would still be working on the bike. He never let me near when he was in the midst of fixing it, said it was dangerous. But I didn't care. And I would throw the worst of tantrums, the kind Mama never had to face, and he always sighed and placed his equipment down. He would pick me up as I wailed and kiss me and tried his best to coax me. In the end, I always ended up sitting on his lap as his hands worked in front of me with screw drivers and rags and brushes. Denzel stopped coming down to the garage, but I never understood why. Mama started to give me those sad smiles when she thought I couldn't see her, and at that time, I didn't understand why either.

Later I figured I couldn't keep throwing tantrums and expecting him to pick me up, so I would stand behind a wall and peek my head out to watch him at work. He caught me eventually. That night onwards, he always had a little pink stool set a few feet away from the bike where I could sit and watch. When my little brother got older and learned to walk, my father set a blue stool just beside mine.

The garage was the first place I'd go to after bath time when I was a little girl. As I got older, it became a place of refuge.

When I was down at the garage, I was free. I didn't have to care about Mrs Molberry's assignments, or feel upset after Mama's lectures. Down at the garage, I couldn't listen to my brother's tantrums, or the bustle of the crowded bar. There was something in the bond that my father and I shared that I couldn't put my finger on. After, I figured it was because Mama had to tend to the bar and look after my little brother and Denzel had soccer training and his friends.

Daddy and I had each other. It wasn't the same with Yuffie who came by to play with me every week or Uncle Barret who brought toys with him when he came to visit, or Uncle Cid and Aunt Shera who would take me with them whenever they brought Finn and Alexi to Costa or the Gold Saucer; it wasn't the same because I knew my father would never leave. He was always there.

We would talk about almost everything in the garage. I always held the longest conversations and asked the most impossible questions just so we would stay longer down in the garage. Eventually, he understood and half an hour of quality time in the garage became two, then three. I started to take my homework down with me, and sometimes books and toys.

I was bad with Math when I was younger. My father taught me to count, and I learnt all of my multiplication tables down in the garage. He taught me with whatever he had with him ; screws, spray cans, brushes. He made me memorize the tables from two to twelve. In the end, I came in first in the Math competition for reciting the tables. My teacher was proud, but he was even more so.

Things weren't going as smooth as I thought they were, I had realized when I was a little older. I never asked about him and Mama. But it was evident, there, in the tension and the stiff movements and the forced smiles they tried so hard to keep and failed and they eventually stopped smiling at each other altogether. He kept his smiles just for me and my brothers.

Dinner time was the worst of all. It was uncomfortable with the screaming silence and Mama would always look at my father but he was always staring at his plate. Sometimes he excused himself before finishing his food.

Then there were the fights that came an hour or two after bedtime. My parents always kept their voices hushed and their language clean when they argued, but even still, I could feel the piercing hurt in both their voices, and for awhile it was hard.

I had to say goodbye to quality time in the end.

He was gone when I was seven years old.

He left.

Sometimes the recollection is so clear, I remember the smell of wet earth, I remember watching his back as he walked, carrying my umbrella in one hand and his luggage in another. He took his motorcycle with him, but in the garage he left the parts he had added while I'd been with him. He had dismantled them. He left a post-it on the wall.

"I'm sorry." _…because you don't want me anymore?_

And I went upstairs.

The bar was closed that day, and I found my mother leaning against the kitchen counter, her back turned towards me. I watched as she heaved and sniffed. She was crying.

"Are you okay?" I finally asked.

She froze, and brushed her tears away with the back of her hand. Then she turned around.

"I'm fine sweetie." She forced a smile, one I was familiar with and born of such hollowness I was starting to get sick of.

"Do you want some dinner?" she asked.

I mumbled a "No thanks". She whispered an "I'm sorry" but I pretended to walk away.

It was Sunday evening. I went up to bedroom and took my Math textbooks and workbooks off the shelf. I recited the multiplication tables one by one, and filled in all the answers to my homework. It started with smooth, gentle strokes of the pencil initially but then they became aggressively rough and I stopped when I noticed a water droplet fall and smudge the pencil mark.

Did I have anything to do with his departure? I wished my father could have told me before he left. Was it only Mama?

I was looking around the room with a mad stream of tears running down my cheeks and I was left searching for an answer that I knew very well.

**A/N This is my very first fanfic. Constructive criticism is welcome! No flames, please! I'm fourteen and I don't think my young heart can take that much :)**


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